Penance
by boohoo650
Summary: PostAmends OneShot.


A/N: I don't own them. Also, this is post 'Amends' but pre 'Smile', as I have been on vacation and am just getting caught up but this was rolling around in my head before watching 'Smile.' Also, this does not fall into any story or realm I have created with any of my other stories.

Bobby watched as she pushed the food around on her plate. He had been trying hard the last few days to make amends for opening the wounds he had, even though he knew that they both knew that justice had been properly served. Attempting to put all of her favorite foods on a plate in front of her was only his latest act of penance.

She had been quiet since they had closed the murder of Kevin Quinn and, subsequently, that of her late husband Joe Dutton. Moving another bite of food to his mouth he chewed silently, watching her and respecting her decision not to talk. She had respected his silence on many occasions and now he was merely returning the favor.

Dirty blonde hair fell in front of her face, blocking from his view her tired eyes. Her small hands continued to push the fork that pushed the food around the plate. Bobby wanted to reach out and still that hand, he had never seen it move just to move.

He knew she knew she was being watched. Still, she wouldn't meet his gaze. She wouldn't even lift her head. Turning his attention back to the plate in front of him he popped another bite of avocado in his mouth.

It was as if she had waited for him to distract himself from his constant task of looking at her.

Of trying to look after her.

When she pushed back from the table the chair legs scraped along the wooden floor. In his second of mental wandering he missed it, and all he was left with was the image of her back moving down the hall and the click of a bedroom door as she closed it behind her.

Goren wanted to chase, wanted to follow. It was merely how he was built. However, he recognized that Alex Eames needed her space. While her demeanor usually lent itself to being more talkative than his, she was equally as calculating with her many words as he was with his few and he knew that when she was ready to talk she would.

It was when the door opened less than five minutes later that Bobby was truly surprised.

She re-emerged in front of him with a sweatshirt and sneakers on, her hair pulled away from her face, her keys in her hand.

"I'm going to go for a walk. When I get back it's probably better if you're not here."

She moved towards the door and it took him a second but this time the chase was definitely on.

"I- I'm sorry? Alex?"

She whirled around so he could see her again and he could see the tears threatening to fall.

"Please don't make this harder for me than it already is, Bobby."

"I- I don't understand. I mean… I know you've been upset these past few days. I just thought you were processing everything. I was trying to give you time. I didn't think you were this mad at me."

"I'm not mad at you. I was. But I'm not. And I won't do the cliché thing here and say that it isn't you because it is you. It's you and it's not your fault that it's you. It's you because you aren't him and I thought I was over that. Really, I did."

"It's okay. You need more time. We can work through this. Together."

He was pleading with her. With his eyes, with his words, with his own restless hands.

"We can't work through it together. It's you because you aren't him but it's me because I don't know what to do with that. I don't know who I am. And I can't sit with you at dinner, or curl up on the couch with you, or lay in bed with you at night and be trying to figure out who I am. It doesn't work. We don't work because we are not who I deluded myself into thinking we were."

"Alex, please."

"Don't Bobby. Don't do this. If there is one thing I know it is that you are above begging. If you care about me even a little bit you will let me go. Please."

He stared at her incredulously.

"I- I can't even believe you're going to play that card. That… 'if you cared about me you'd…' it's crap, Alex, and you know it. I love you. It is impossible for me to walk away from you the way you're suggesting."

"That's why I'm doing the walking, Bobby. You just have to leave."

Panic and confusion flooded his mind, bringing with them a myriad of questions but no answers. Had he really damaged their relationship that badly? Was she really not ready, as she claimed? Was this a permanent arrangement or would it just be a temporary fix? What about their partnership? And how, of all things, was this the last of the questions to enter his mind?

"Alex- Eames," reverting to her family name he wondered if she would feel steadied by him referring to her as he did in their working relationship, "what about…"

"We can still work together." She cut into his sentence mid-thought, not giving him a chance to finish. "We're adults, Bobby. When we started seeing each other outside of our professional lives I promised myself that I wouldn't be involved with you if I didn't think that in the end I would be able to work with you no matter what."

"Really. You really think you can come to work every day and just… you can just shut your emotions out like that? Because I used to be able to do that and then you walked through the door and I'm not sure I can anymore."

"Well then that's up to you. On my end... on my end we can still work together."

Her eyes cast their gaze on the floor beneath her and fixated on what he could only imagine was a spec of dirt that only she could see. When her eyes returned to meet his he saw the shadows of uncertainty in them and knew that as hard as she couldn't fit everything in to some neat, little box.

She began to back away, shuffling her small sneakered feet towards the door.

Urgency crept into the room for Bobby Goren at that moment. The woman in front of him was as stubborn as anyone he'd ever met and he knew that once she made up her mind there would be no getting her back.

He advanced on her quickly, backing her into the wall next to the door. Planting his hands on either side of her face he leaned in until he was so close he could feel her exhaling onto his neck. Warm, slow and shaky it came and he wanted to breathe it in and steady it for her.

Her eyes were avoiding his now and he knew that her resolve was weakened, if only for a split second.

Cupping her face he pulled her lips up to his as he stooped to meet hers. They collided sloppily, unprepared, like teenagers experiencing one another for the first time. Goren could feel her respond, opening to him just a little.

Until she slipped under his arm and away from him.

"Tell me, Alex. Tell me you don't feel anything."

"Bobby…" A note of warning sounded in her voice.

"Tell me, Alex. Tell me and I'll stop. Look me in the eye and tell me you feel nothing and I'll leave you alone."

She couldn't even bare to face him in that moment. Her eyes continued to search longingly for that spec on the ground.

"You won't even have to go for that walk, Eames. I'll just go. I'll come back for my stuff another day, even. But you have to say it. You have to look me in the eye and say it before I give an inch."

"I- I can't Bobby, you know I can't. Of course I feel it, of course I care. It's just too much right now. It's you, it's him, it's me it's us, it's all of us. It's like there is a ghost with us and I didn't even know that it had been haunting me all this time. But I have to get it to stop, Bobby. I have to figure myself out for myself. Do you get it?"

"No. No, I'll come right out and say it… I don't get it."

"I was married. Young. He died. Young. I threw myself into my work and that is all I know about myself. That I'm a cop and that I'm a widow. I don't know who or what I am without those things. Just when I started to get over the fact that I'm a widow you came along and there wasn't any real in between. I need that in between. I need it now or I'm never going to have it. Not to mention that everything I believed about the circumstances surrounding my becoming a widow were tossed out the window last week. I'm still licking those wounds."

Forlornly he looked at her. Longingly.

"Please. Bobby, please. I'm going to go and I need you to be gone when I get back. I'm not saying no to you and I'm not saying never. I'm just saying not now."

When Alex Eames slipped out the door leaving Bobby to stare after her he could not help but wonder at the empty hollow feeling he felt inside.

Emotion came crashing down without warning. His mother's death he had been ready for. He had been given time to prepare. Apparently you didn't get any kind of six month warning when it came to lovers changing their minds.

Fin.

A/N2: That is it. Done and done. There will be no other chapter or sequel no matter how hard you beg. There may, however, be another take on this eventually as the episode inspired many different thoughts/feelings for me.


End file.
